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Anger Over Coup Trumps Payouts to Thai Farmers

CHIANG YUEN, Thailand — They emerged flush with cash, the rice farmers who traveled to a state-owned bank here to retrieve the money that Thailand’s military junta had ordered they be paid.

But if the country’s ruling generals expected gratitude, it was not on display on Tuesday in this northeastern town, a bastion of the former governing party, which the military overthrew in a coup last Thursday.

“I still have anger in my heart,” said Maitree Vichapa, a farmer and part-time carpenter who arrived with his wife and child to receive 27,000 baht, or around $850. “We should have had this money a long time ago.”

In what it described as one of its first priorities, Thailand’s military ordered that 92 billion baht ($2.8 billion) be disbursed to rice farmers, a huge sum that is more than the entire annual budget for the national police force. The payouts, meant to lift rural incomes, were twice the market price for the farmers’ rice.

Photo

Farmers near Chiang Yuen received cash Tuesday that had been withheld by the previous government. The money was meant to lift incomes in rural provinces.Credit
Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

The previous government tried but was unable to pay farmers in the face of debilitating protests. The Bangkok establishment called the subsidies a wasteful and corrupt scheme. But the new military rulers ordered that the payments be made, and that the country’s banks lend the government the necessary cash.

The military also cranked up its propaganda machine, aided by the Thai news media, which has been largely subservient since the coup. “Farmers Receive Money With Tears of Joy,” ran the headline in a national newspaper, Ban Muang.

Other reports showed farmers marching to army bases to hand over red roses and holding up banners proclaiming appreciation for the general who led the coup, Prayuth Chan-ocha. Identical banners, featuring rice stalks and the same image of General Prayuth raising his hand in the air, were paraded by farmers in Phuket, Lopburi and Ubon Ratchathani, provinces that are separated by hundreds of miles.

“We, on behalf of all farmers, would like to thank you for your true kindness and understanding of the hardship of the people,” a man who was described as a farmer was quoted by the ASTV Manager news website as saying. “We are here to offer moral support and flowers to thank you, the military of the entire people.”

LAOS

THAILAND

Chiang Yuen

LOPBURI

UBON

RATCHATHANI

Bangkok

CAMBODIA

Gulf of

Thailand

VIETNAM

PHUKET

200 miles

In Chiang Yuen, though, where there was no visible military presence nearby, farmers chuckled over the reports.

“Real farmers wouldn’t come out and do those things,” said Duen Douangchansi, a farmer who received 280,000 baht (about $8,580) on Tuesday. “Real farmers would be too busy working.”

David Streckfuss, an expert in Thai politics who is based in the northeast, where the former government was popular, said the army was unlikely to win over many people in the region by handing out the rice money.

“Simply paying people for what they are owed is not going to buy the military any popularity, or somehow legitimize it,” Mr. Streckfuss said.

Photo

People collect rice money on Tuesday at the state-owned Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives in Chiang Yuen, Thailand.Credit
Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

Mr. Streckfuss said that the army must address the fundamental issue of trust in democracy among the Thai citizenry.

The farmers in Chiang Yuen did not criticize the military on Tuesday, and some said they saw the army as a neutral force in the country. Even so, they said that a return to elections was imperative, and that they were confident that the ousted Pheu Thai party would win again. The party was founded by Thaksin Shinawatra, a former business tycoon and prime minister who is widely admired here for backing populist policies including universal health care, and his sister, Yingluck, was prime minister at the time of the coup.

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“The Bangkok establishment sees democracy as an unfair use of their tax money,” Mr. Streckfuss said. “They don’t see policies pursued by elected governments as benefiting them.” By contrast, he said, voters in the poorer northern provinces benefited from those policies, and “people in the northeast think democracy works for them.”

General Prayuth has said the country will return to democracy, but has not offered a timetable.

The rice payments were an apparent attempt by the ruling generals to show a compassionate side toward poorer provincial voters disenfranchised by the coup. But the junta also flashed its hard-line tactics on Tuesday when the country’s former education minister, Chaturon Chaisang, was arrested by soldiers at Bangkok’s foreign correspondents’ club soon after addressing journalists. Thai media reported he would be court-martialed for failing to surrender to the junta. And two Thai reporters who had asked General Prayuth about elections at a news conference were summoned to a meeting of junta leaders. “Being insistent with questioning is considered inappropriate,” said Maj. Gen. Pollapat Wannapaktr, a military spokesman.

In Chiang Yuen, Boonsri Pukongchana, 65, a former village headman, said that he was disappointed that the local talk radio station had stopped taking calls from people because of the coup, and that his neighbors were annoyed at having to seek permission to stay at a party later than the nationwide 10 p.m. curfew.

A version of this article appears in print on May 28, 2014, on Page A5 of the New York edition with the headline: Anger Over Coup Trumps Payouts to Thai Farmers. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe